


Care and Feeding

by Eponin



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Stanford Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-04
Updated: 2011-04-04
Packaged: 2017-10-17 14:22:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/177776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eponin/pseuds/Eponin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When an injured Dean shows up at Stanford, Sam has to take care of him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Care and Feeding

**Author's Note:**

> For scarlett_o, who asked for sick Dean and Sam taking care of him. Thanks for the layout, sweetie! Kindly beta’d by after_the_light, beanside, skewedview and amcnh. Thank you!

He’d spent a year getting used to normal, so the sight of Dean lounging against the door to his dorm room made Sam to trip up the last few steps to his floor.

“Graceful, Sammy.” Dean grinned up at him as though there hadn’t been a year of angry words and silence between them. The longer mop of hair he sported gave testament to the passed time, however.

Then Dean pitched forward, collapsing as though all his bones had turned to water, and Sam dropped his books, letting them scatter across the hall, so he could catch his brother before his hard head could hit the floor. He lowered Dean gently, leaning him up against the door long enough to fish his room keys from his inside coat pocket. Sam squatted and heaved his brother over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. He fumbled the keys into the lock and kicked the door open, thanking whatever deity happened to be listening that his roommate was gone until Tuesday.

He staggered forward, arms wrapped around Dean’s thighs to anchor him.

He tried to shove thoughts of his father to the back of his mind, but Dad would never let Dean go off by himself if he’d known he was injured, and that just made Sam worry more. About Dean and what he’d been up to, about why Dad wasn’t with him and where he was now. And why the hell Dean had come to him, when his brother hadn’t even bothered to call and let him know he was still alive during the past year.

A low groan from Dean reminded Sam that he had more urgent things to worry about. Like making sure Dean didn’t puke down the back of his pants.

He set Dean down on the bed and started a rough examination while his brother was still unconscious, pulling aside the layers of clothing Dean favored at this time of year. His skin was hot to the touch, pulled tight over the bone. He finally had to shuck off Dean’s pants, manhandling his brother on the bed to get them off, before he found the problem. Three parallel sets of gashes, long and razor thin, had been torn into the inside of Dean’s left thigh. Claws of some kind, then, or something with whippet thin nails.

Sam reached underneath his bed, pulled out the first aid kit he kept stocked with items stolen from the student clinic from its place up against the wall. He’d filled it at the beginning of freshman year and hadn’t had to open it since. He settled in to patch up his brother and wait for him to wake up.

++++++++++

When Sam looked up from his laptop to find Dean staring at him, head rolled to the side on Sam’s pillow, eyes cloudy and confused, it was two days later. He slid the laptop off to the side, let it come to rest on the bed, and swung his legs to the floor.

“Sam?”

“Hey.” Sam reached out and laid his hand on Dean’s forehead, checking his temperature and the fact that Dean allowed it meant he didn’t even have to ask how his brother was feeling.

“Where are we?”

“Palo Alto.”

Dean just looked confused.

“Stanford?” Sam continued. “School? My dorm room?”

He knew the moment it got through to Dean; he struggled up in the bed, eyes going cold and closed off.

Sam growled, reaching one arm around to swat Dean – gently – across the back of the head, startling the blank look right off his brother’s face. “Dude, give it up. _You_ came to me.”

Dean looked sheepish for all of two seconds before changing the subject. “How long?”

“It’s Sunday,” Sam said. “Two days.”

“Well shit.” Dean blinked. “What happened?”

“You tell me. You had infected scratches on your back, your thigh. What the hell did you run into?”

Dean grinned. “Harpies.”

Sam stared at his brother. Of course. Harpy venom. No wonder Dean had been out of it for so long. “Well, at least you didn’t burn your eyebrows off this time.”

Though Sam didn’t doubt Dean had thought the loss worth it, at the time, just to get to use the flamethrower.

“Here.” He pulled a bottle from the drawer in his desk and tapped two pills into his hand. “Take these now that you’re awake.”

Dean peered at them, then swallowed them both down with the water Sam gave him.

Sam waited until he was done drinking before breaking down and asking, “Dean? Where’s Dad?”

“Topeka.” Dean glanced at him before his gaze wandered to the Metallica poster Troy had hung above his bed. “Your taste has improved, Sammy.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “Dean.”

“Where’d you get the penicillin?”

Sam felt his ears turn red. “Stole them from the student clinic last year.”

“That’s my boy.” Dean beamed at him, then looked startled when the expression morphed into a yawn.

“Go back to sleep, Dean,” Sam murmured, dropping the subject of their father for the moment. For once, Dean listened. Or maybe it was the harpy venom.

++++++++++

Sam woke the next morning to bright sunlight streaming in from blinds he’d forgotten to close and an empty bed across from him. Rubbing his hands across his face, he rolled up to sit on the edge of the bed. A startled smile crossed his face when he saw the glint of metal left in the nest Dean had made of his blankets.

He picked up the curved knife Dean had given him for his last birthday; the one Sam had left behind along with everything else when he’d left home last year, and a container of Morton’s.

Only Dean would say _stay safe_ and _I love you_ with a sharp blade and a canister of salt.


End file.
